Is there a fee to enter?

There is no fee to enter the Irish Business Design Challenge.

How will entries be assessed?

The Irish Business Design Challenge jury will adjudicate submitted entries.

Below is an indicative, but not exhaustive, list of considerations for assessment:

• Eligibility: does the submission meet the eligibility criteria and adhere to the terms and conditions?
• Relevance: to what extent does the submitted solution respond to a clearly defined and well evidenced societal or environmental challenge or need or opportunity?
• Impact: to what extent does the submitted solution advance environmental quality, economic prosperity and social equity, and can it demonstrate tangible impact in relation to all or some of these dimensions?
• Innovation and value-add: to what extent is the solution/service/product/system developed or implemented innovative and disruptive?
• Excellence: to what extent does the solution/product/service reflect a high standard and compelling case for selection?

Full details on the eligibility criteria and assessment are listed in the competition terms and conditions and scoring framework.

The Irish Business Design Challenge reserves the right to withdraw entries if submissions received are not of sufficient quality or infringe on the rights of any third party.

What are the accepted file types for supporting materials?

Only images and videos may be submitted as supporting material.
No other materials will be considered.

The maximum file size is 15MB and you can upload the following file types:

• PDF
• JPG/JPEG
• PNG

Videos must be hosted on either YouTube or Vimeo.

What are Business Heroes?

A selection of ‘Business Heroes’ will be randomly selected throughout the competition.

Selection in the Business Heroes does not imply that the business will automatically be included in the final shortlisting.

What happens if my entry is featured?

If selected to be featured in a media interview, profile or broadcast, an Irish Business Design Challenge team member will be in touch to discuss how best to format and profile the selected work.

Selection does not imply that the business will automatically be included in the final shortlisting.

Why are submissions featured before the closing date?

The purpose of featuring specific submissions is to raise awareness and boost the profile of micro, small and medium enterprises. Featured submissions will be randomly chosen.

How does the voting and judging process work?

Submissions will be screened and assessed to ensure they meet the eligibility criteria as set out in the terms and conditions.

There will be a two tier judging system.

1st stage – A panel of 5 jurors scores each entry, advancing the best to the next stage

2nd – Industry experts will assess the semi-finalists.

Winners are then determined by a hybrid system made up of:

public voting (20%)

judging panel (80%)

Anyone can vote when the public voting opens. At the judging panel stages, all entries will be evaluated with the same criteria.

All entries that are reviewed by the judging panel will also undergo due diligence checks carried out by an independent auditor.

The judges’ scoring is based on a set of evaluation criteria as described in the scoring framework, based on innovation, impact, resilience and alignment with sustainable design principles.

What is meant by a human-centred approach?

For the purpose of this competition, ‘human-centred approach’ refers to businesses which create meaningful and innovative solutions by understanding the source of a problem and developing a solution that benefits their clients, business or society.

What is design?

For the purpose of this competition, ‘design’ refers to the application of processes to create meaningful and innovative solutions by understanding the source of a problem and developing a clear solution.

What is sustainable design and sustainable development?

Sustainable design seeks to create opportunities for positive impacts on the environment, reducing consumption of non-renewable resources, minimise waste and create healthy, productive environments.

Sustainable development includes three dimensions: environmental quality, economic prosperity and social equity. Hence, sustainable design aims to develop products, services or systems that have these three dimensions embedded at their core.

What are sustainable design practices?

• Enhancing indoor or outdoor environmental quality
• Minimising non-renewable energy consumption
• Optimising operational and maintenance practices to protect and conserve water
• Significantly reducing or minimising waste
• Using environmentally preferable products